Mr Jock Kreitals

Jock Kreitals has worked as an economist, policy manager and advisor in both the public and private sectors, including a number of industry associations. He trained as an economist and has an honours degree in econometrics and mathematics.

Jock started his career in public sector research bureaus including the Productivity Commission and the ACCC. His involvement in policy development led to an interest in working for the “other side” – industry, rather than government.

In seeking to find out what industry wants, he took on advocacy roles with various industry associations such as the agricultural sector and later, the real estate sector.

“Industry advocacy is about more than just knocking on the doors of government departments, it’s about building connections and networks with bureaucracy and sitting around the table to share ideas and information and find solutions to problems.”

As the CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Australia, Jock values education and training very highly and has been at the forefront of efforts to improve the quality and standard of education within the industry.

“The entry of low-cost providers into the real estate services market, along with the constantly evolving and changing technology has caused some disruption for traditional industry providers.

“This disruption has impacted and diminished public perceptions of what a provider should be and our approach to counter that and improve public trust has been to improve the standard of and level of education within the industry to ensure traditional industry people can take on the role of trusted adviser.”

“Achieving national consistency in training is difficult because each of the state licensing bodies has different requirements.

“Previous attempts at reaching agreement on a national licensing model tended to reach for the lowest common denominator and were subsequently unsuccessful. However, those attempts drove the industry to continue to reach for consistency and higher standards in education and training.

“The training packages have been reviewed and training available is now at a higher level than it used to be, however the process of adoption of the new standards in each state is ongoing. Each state’s Real Estate Institute is working with state regulators to achieve those outcomes – higher standards of education and training across the industry.

“That’s one of the moving parts of this exercise, getting all the states at a higher and more uniform level. That will go a long way to building trust among consumers and advisers and key stakeholders such as government agencies, reducing consumer complaints and the cost of dealing with those.

“It’s a constantly changing regulatory regime, incorporating growing requirements around sustainability and energy saving, which affects both the sales and property management side of the industry. As these new needs and requirements are raised by the various state regulators, the industry is responding and including the new information in the training packages.”

Having played rugby union as a junior for the ACT, Jock remains an avid rugby fan and continues to enjoy watching the game with a decent glass of red in one hand and his two dachshunds (often sporting Wallaby scarves) seated next to him. He escapes the Canberra weather as often as possible to enjoy long beach walks on the coast around Merimbula in southern New South Wales.